


And If Life Taught Me Anything We All Need To Calm Down

by lobac



Category: Venom (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Crack, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 05:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19784182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lobac/pseuds/lobac
Summary: Playing with an AU in which the symbiote, with all its memories, experience and maturity intact, travels back in time to start over and keep everything from going off the rails.





	And If Life Taught Me Anything We All Need To Calm Down

The alien looks down at him with its wide, expressionless eyes. Implacable. Unmoving. A pillar of celestial judgement, the very last thing he needed, and he invited it into his home. Their brief moment of connection seems like a lie, now. A pretence. They aren’t the same after all. It isn’t any different from the rest of them.

“I have to,” he pleads, one more time. “You have to understand. I have to.”

The alien seems mildly agitated. Like he’s scaring it, too. Scaring the one that dripped from the ceiling and seeped through his skin without warning. Eddie tries to find that funny, but his face refuses to show it as anything other than agony.

“You don’t know what he’s done to me,” he continues, voice wavering. “You don’t know what he’s made of me. I barely recognise myself.” He swallows. “I can’t… I can’t go on like this. One of us has to die.” 

Forming the words is an almost masochistic pleasure.

“If it’s me, fine! But you, you present another option, and if it’s him, think about what that could mean. Nobody else would have to go through this.” His voice drips with contempt. “Nobody else would have to be rendered worthless by his… righteousness. I could… I couldn’t undo it, but I could, at least…” Eddie lowers his gaze. “I need to. I need it.”

Finally, a reaction. The alien’s eyes narrow. Eddie’s thought processes are hard to express in words. They just feel right. He thought that if anyone had a chance of understanding, it’d be the one who didn’t rely on words, who could look directly into his mind.

Instead, a shiver runs down his spine as he realises that his mind’s as tainted as the rest of him, that he shouldn’t have been so quick to open it to someone, that all he’s done is invite more rejection.

_Know what you need_ , the alien says in his head.

Its body flows forward to grab hold of him. It’s restraining him. It’s decided he’s dangerous. It doesn’t understand. It doesn’t understand. Eddie struggles, for fear of his life, if in an unusually literal sense.

“Please!”

It’s in vain. The alien is strong. It has him trapped in some kind of cocoon. It could easily squeeze him to death. Eddie thinks it, forcefully. If he’s a threat, it could easily put an end to him.

Eddie is manoeuvred into a horizontal position.

_You need_ , the alien says, _the snuggle wuggles_. 

Eddie just lies there.

“What?”

_The cuddle huddle._

Eddie takes a second to feel what’s going on. He’s… surrounded. By… alien substance. It’s… soft.

_Warm_ , it adds, almost proud.

Eddie maintains the tension for one second more. Then he relaxes into it with an entirely unidentifiable noise. He doesn’t think about anything. His brain is stopped in his tracks. There’s nothing to think about this.

A small tendril moves up to his face. It pokes him gently.

_Kiss_ , the alien thinks each time. _Kiss. Kiss._

“Why,” Eddie starts, “why do you keep-”

_No lips_ , the alien thinks. _Clarification_.

Eddie feels some type of way he wasn’t expecting to feel ever again, that much he can say. The alien preens in his mind as it strokes up and down his arms.

“I see.”

* * *

Eddie falls asleep, tangled up in its tendrils, and the symbiote didn't even have to resort to telling him it's beddy-bye time. There's a string of drool hanging from his open mouth. His eyes are encrusted with the remains of tears. He's all muscles and coarse body hair and oddly self-righteous self-esteem issues.

If there's one thing the symbiote is certain of, it's that it would die for this man without hesitation.

It owes him that much.

There was a time when Eddie claimed that it ruined his life. Corrupted him, like a cancer spreading across his soul. Back then, it was a cause for rage. Now, it's a cause for regret.

It has so much more of it than any human heart could hold.

But it's been given a second chance. It's going to do better, this time around. On every single front.

It can make pancakes now, that's one concrete improvement. Doesn't even have to disturb its host's rest by piloting him to do it. It can just extend to the kitchen, through what was once a living room and is now a haunting case of environmental storytelling, newspaper cut-outs and shattered mirrors and absurd weight-lifting equipment and all.

As it works, handling pans and grease and batter, it tries to stave off its not-insignificant nervousness about having a meaningful conversation with Eddie. Facing this version of him. Dealing with how deep its familiarity goes, how there's no recognition in his eyes, how their history needs to be built anew. How he's volatile beyond belief. Stubborn, too. Sad. Angry.

One step at a time. Don't validate him. Don't invalidate him. Easy.

Eventually, it realises it's created a three foot stack of anxiety pancakes. It's fine. Hosts are always hungry.

When it brings them back to him, Eddie stirs awake, though not peacefully. He immediately chokes on his own spit. As he coughs, the symbiote props him up like he's on his deathbed. When he recovers, he stares at its offering, blankly.

Syrup? the symbiote asks, though it squeezes the bottle before getting an answer, not really having needed to ask in the first place. Eddie shrinks back from it. The symbiote gives him some room to. It's fine. It's understandable. It tries not to think of the immediate, effortless closeness they'd achieved when they'd been bound in purpose and moral dysfunction.

"Why are you... doing this?"

'In the future, we were married, but I strongly feel that I did you more bad than good, and now I've travelled back in time to set you on a better path' is not the explanation the symbiote intends to whip out. Not yet.

He is its host, it thinks instead. It needs to keep him healthy.

"Why are you here?"

It thinks of him, trying to kill himself. It was only natural to want to stop him.

"No, I mean... Why are you here?" There's a flicker of the fascination it so strongly associates with their first meeting. "An alien life form, like nothing you'd even see in the conspiracy rags. The... the only thing like you was..."

Eddie thinks of the eldritch entity he once met. The symbiote soothes him, assuring that it is nothing so powerful, so drastic, so unknowable. It's unnecessary, it knows. Eddie had grown invested in the creature's fate in a matter of moments. He hadn't feared or hated it. He was special like that.

It shows him that it was brought here. Unintentionally. It hitched a ride on... someone.

"Okay, then why are you... here? In the first sense." Eddie rubs his temples. "I'm sure you understand. Something like this doesn't just... happen."

What? Someone caring for you?

That might have been the wrong thing to think. Eddie feels physically pushed into a corner by it. Sadness could easily turn to anger.

It's a fugitive, it quickly continues. Presumed dead, which is the ideal state for a fugitive to be in. It needs a host to thrive, it needs shelter, but it can't risk revealing itself. It would be experimented on. It would be executed.

Not one part of that is a lie, the symbiote thinks to itself. With knowledge of the future, it had considered itself something close to invulnerable, but that wasn't true. It could be caught, and then Eddie would inevitably try to fist-fight Spider-Man and end up rotting in jail and it'd all have been for nothing.

No. It is asking to be taken in, point blank. It is asking to stay.

The lines of Eddie's face soften, insofar as they physically can. He can sympathise with an outcast. He can buy its justification for being kind to him. It wants something in return. That makes sense.

It pushes the plate at him. Look, it thinks. It can earn its keep.


End file.
